Aftershock
by trufflemores
Summary: 2.06. "Stay with me." Caitlin POV.


**Author's Notes:** Hey guys. So, two things! Number one: this is definitely _not_ entirely medically accurate. Apologies for its shortcomings. And number two: miss hearing from you guys. It takes a bit of the wind out of my sails to publish fics that receive very little response. I'm not saying "review or else!" but I certainly miss hearing from you. I feel a bit like no one's reading these fics. Which is fine, but if that's the case my upload rate will definitely be more limited.

Caitlin doesn't know where to start.

Instinct directs her: she puts her hands over the stab wound in his chest. Her ears are ringing as she surveys the damage, unable to see the worst of it under the suit. A burning, catastrophic sense of dread sweeps through her. All she can do is plead, "Stay with me, Barry. Stay with me."

If he goes under now, he won't resurface.

" _Stay with me_."

At her side, Cisco breathes shallowly, sitting back on folded knees, thunderstruck. He slides forward, at once repulsed and drawn to the scene. Something about the urgency to the way he breathes, " _Caitlin_ " pulls her back together.

She finds her voice. "Get the backboard."

Triaging a wounded superhero requires care, speed, and precision. _Care_ doesn't translate to _comfort_ : it's what needs to be done. Luckily for them, Barry's out of it: he doesn't even twitch when Cisco and she slide him onto the board, fingers flexing feebly at his sides. They don't have time to strap him in, transferring him directly onto a gurney instead.

Caitlin unzips the upper half of his suit, exposing angry swaths of red, purple, and blue, including three distinct puncture marks. The stab wound is mid-abdomen and still bleeding freely. Amid the wreckage that is Barry's torso, even that almost disappears.

"Keep pressure on it," Caitlin says.

Cisco takes a white cloth and holds it there to staunch the blood flow, both hands gingerly on top of the wound. He looks like he might pass out, but Caitlin doesn't have anyone else. Harrison is gone, presumably chasing after Zoom, and Joe and Iris are too far to be of usefulness to her.

It's not ideal, but she needs to act _right now_. Whatever works, works.

Training kicks in: Caitlin hooks Barry up to an IV, gets him on a heart rate monitor, and settles an oxygen mask over his face before locally injecting anesthetic around the stab wound. He's unresponsive, but she still asks, "Can you feel this?" twice, poking around the area with a small needle to see if the numbing agent is taking effect or not. Normally, she wouldn't have a choice but to operate without it. A few stitches wouldn't kill Barry – in an otherwise normal state of health.

But he's holding on by a thread and shock could kill him.

Stitching up the wound takes three minutes. Caitlin's hands are steady even as her breath remains shallow. The problem with operating on your friends is that you're _operating on your friends_. There is no margin for error: if she fails, Barry dies. She could overcome the loss of a stranger at her hands; she doesn't know how she would survive the loss of a friend.

Bandaging the stitched area helps her focus. Once it's taken care of, she's able to work on other areas. There's a compound fracture on his right leg that needs addressing, _soon_ , because if it starts to heal it'll be absolute hell to fix, but Barry's breathing is labored, intense, and Caitlin zeroes in on it instead.

The steady trickle of blood from his lips reminds Caitlin of the severity of his condition, how feather-thin their chances of success are. He could be going into septic shock – God knows what was on Zoom's clawed hands – or heart failure. The bruising is so extensive she knows multiple fractures are involved, any of which could puncture a vital organ and bleed him out before she ever gets a chance to help. Suffocation is a big concern: there's a wheezing quality to his breath that sets her on edge, moving her into action, prompting her to treat the slightly sunken left side of his chest as a pneumothorax.

"This is going to hurt," she warns him, sticking a needle in. The anguished groan he releases makes her chest tighten, but it's almost reassuring: he's still _alive_. "It's okay, almost done," she says softly, pulling the plunger up and draining the air, _feeling_ the immediate shift in pace from desperate to heavy, his eyelids fluttering closed.

She's barely aware of anyone else in the room, reaching for a portable x-ray scanner and getting off a few quick shots of his chest before determining that he isn't bleeding out internally.

Time isn't on their side, so she sets aside the disconcertingly shallow quality of his breathing to focus on his right leg, cutting off the fabric before x-raying his shin. Satisfied with the images, she hits him up with another generous dose of morphine before setting it.

He doesn't react, eyes shut, skin disarmingly cool to the touch. For a moment, Caitlin's terrified he's dead. But the heart rate monitor continues to beep, unnervingly shallow for him – 62 bpm – but still there. _Still alive._

 _Stay with me, Barry_.

He's holding on. To her surprise, his eyelids flutter open, barely quarter-mast, watching her.

She works methodically, head to toe. A nasal cannula helps him breathe a little easier; she props him up carefully to assist him further. They get the suit off his legs with some effort, allowing Caitlin to see that the damage was confined mostly above his hips; she makes sure the bandage around his right left is fully secure before approaching the most dangerous problem.

They both heard the _crack_ , loud and menacing, over the comm. It still shocks her when they get the images back on the tablet. There's a complete translocation of one of his discs in the thoracolumbar region. She addresses with a soft brace, aiming to hold it in place so it heals in the right way. Cisco helps her get it around him; Barry groans softly the entire time, making Caitlin's heart ache a little more intensely. He hit a concrete ground hard from an incredible height: no human being could survive that kind of fall without assistance. Fortunately for them, Cisco was an over-preparer: he had installed shock absorbers into the suit to dilute the lethal impact, reduced to a punishing collision which left him alive – but badly injured.

Dangerously vulnerable.

From that point onward, he hadn't stood a chance against Zoom. Snapping his back was breathtakingly swift. Stabbing him with the speed-suppressing serum was almost redundant.

Barry's vitals _tanked_.

 _He's killing him!_

Then both speedsters went off the grid.

Zoom moved too quickly for the suit's camera; pinpointing him as he zoomed across the city at over three thousand miles an hour was equally futile.

Then Zoom brought Barry to _them_ , showing him off like a trophy, dangling from his grasp like he weighed nothing.

Caitlin had been worried about what Zoom might be like, given how strongly the other meta-humans had reacted.

She'd never imagined he would be _that bad_.

For one breathtaking minute, she was positive that Barry was going to die.

Then Cisco hit Zoom with a dart and Zoom _went down_ with an outraged cry, more annoyed than pained, before vanishing from their sight before anyone could move.

Caitlin almost didn't care.

They had Barry. He was still alive.

And she had to keep him that way.

She's starting to feel tentatively optimistic about him, proceeding in a slightly more normal way: a neck brace slides smoothly into place, a shock blanket slides up to his waistline, and a second IV delivers fluids. She doesn't add a sedative – doesn't dare slow down his already compromised metabolism more, worrying ceaselessly about the risk of too much morphine – but she senses how far gone he is. She squeezes his hand lightly, asking, "Barry?"

He squeezes back faintly, and that's the last she gets from him before he drops off completely.

No amount of gentle coercion gets any additional response.

At some point, Harrison returns, then Joe arrives, then Iris, who leaves with Linda, promising to return soon. Caitlin ignores them, triple-checking her work.

She's seen Barry through a lot, but she still stares at the spectacular blue streaks along his jawline, evidence of yet another fracture; the similarly pronounced rings around his neck, mostly but not completely concealed by the brace; and the intense seascape of purple, red, and yellow spots across his chest, looping around his waist and continuing across his back.

With paternal precision, Joe cleans up Barry's face with a warm washcloth. With equal care, Caitlin directs Cisco and Joe to help her push the gurney into a quiet side room. With a slow exhale, Caitlin realizes that the rest is up to Barry.

. o .

The first six hours are _long_.

Adrenaline wears off around the second hour and it's all Caitlin can do to stay on her feet. Cisco actually falls asleep, chair pulled up to Barry's bedside and arms folded on top of it, head resting on them. Barry doesn't so much as twitch, and Cisco is a surprisingly quiet sleeper, not even twitching. Caitlin's glad – she doesn't want to have to wake him, but she doesn't want him to cause Barry any pain, either – and she leaves them for a time, trying to focus on other things. Like Zoom.

But Zoom seems distant, and she sinks into an almost stupor.

Cisco's up in a couple hours and tensions rise as Joe and Harrison seem to occupy the same space with very different energies. Harrison's entire demeanor is disappointed, angry, upset that Zoom got away; Joe is angry at _him_ for putting Barry in harm's way.

It finally culminates after six hours into an actual fight.

Even though Barry _looks_ significantly better, he's still very noticeably unconscious. _He's healing_ , Caitlin thinks, interrupting the fight between Joe and Harrison as it escalates into actual blows.

"Barry's vitals are stabilizing," she reminds them.

They don't seem to notice; she finds she doesn't really care. Once Cisco talks Harrison down and Joe concedes to take a walk and get some air, she returns to Barry's side. Checking his vitals. Wishing he would wake up but needing him to heal. Wanting to undo the last eight hours completely.

She misses the _job well done_ feeling of Cisco and Barry offering contradictory pizza suggestions while she orders, movie nights where they never seem to agree on one and somehow end up watching really trashy late night talk shows and laughing about it anyway, and going home at the end of the night to her apartment without worrying about either of them.

It always hits her hard how integral their health and happiness is to hers when something like this happens.

So it's easy to tune out the tension, focusing her energy instead on Cisco and Barry.

The night watch drags on for three more hours.

Then, unexpectedly, Cisco shifts on his feet, saying, "Hey. I think he's waking up."

Barry's eyelids flutter.

"Barry?" Caitlin prompts.

One eyebrow arches inquisitively, tired eyes blinking back at them.

"Hey," he rasps, barely there, hurting, but Caitlin still smiles because he's _awake_.

And, in spite of everything, he still sounds like Barry.

The relief in the room is palpable.

"You scared the crap out of us, dude," Cisco says, a little breathless himself.

"How bad is it?" he asks.

Calmness comes naturally to her; somehow even more so, knowing that he's awake. "Bad," she admits softly. "If . . . you didn't heal so quickly, I would be very worried."

Barry blinks slowly, visibly struggling against fatigue, before asking, "Linda, how is she?"

Caitlin almost can't believe it. _You just had your back broken_. She's impressed he even remembers Linda's involvement. Luckily, Cisco picks up the ball.

"She's fine," he says softly, "staying out with a friend in Cove City."

"Zoom?"

He doesn't even flinch.

Cisco hesitates. "Let's – worry about him when you're back on your feet, okay?" He clasps Barry's knee gently, one of the only non-painful areas, and Barry – stares, feeling his legs.

Starts to sit up.

"Oh, no," she says gently, stepping forward and putting a hand on his shoulder. "You're not going anywhere."

"Yeah, you just got your ass kicked," Cisco joins in.

"No, guys . . ." there's a soft, devastated, and utterly disbelieving tone in Barry's voice as he admits, "I can't feel my legs."

Looking up at them, he shakes his head, repeating in the same slow, heavy voice, "I can't feel my legs."

For exactly six seconds, Caitlin has nothing to say. The tears in Barry's eyes finally give her the strength to speak. "Zoom . . . broke your back, Barry. You have a translocated disc in your thoracolumbar region," she explains, as gently and simply as she can. "That takes time to heal. Even for you."

When the first tear escapes its hold – brought on by narcotics, stress, emotion, or sheer exhaustion, she doesn't know – she sits on the bed beside him, taking his hand.

"What if it doesn't heal?" he asks, a lump so heavy in his throat he seems scarcely able to speak past it.

"Let's give it time," Caitlin suggests, squeezing his hand lightly and brushing away the tear. "Cross that bridge if we come to it."

Barry tips his head in the faintest nod, closing his eyes, and she prays that she doesn't have to lie to him and say, _I don't know if this is temporary. I don't know if you'll ever be able to walk again_.

She refuses to believe it. It's not practical – it's a _real possibility_ that it's permanent and the sooner she comes to terms with it, the easier it'll be – but she can't look at Barry, whose happiness derives extensively from his ability to run, and tell him that he might never experience that again.

"Okay," he says at last, dull, hollow. Then, with a little more conviction, he repeats, "Okay."

She squeezes his hand lightly, a wordless reassurance; he squeezes back, equally soft, a wordless response.

 _Whatever happens,_ it seems to say, _we're going to get through this together._

It'll be a while before they can have pizza or movie night or even just a day where Caitlin doesn't worry about them.

But for now, she has both of them – _alive_ and whole – and even though one is healing, he's still alive.

. o .

Six hours later finds her sitting on a chair across from Barry's bed, reading _Game of Thrones_ on Cisco's tablet. Low volume classical music drifts lightly through the room, like a theater hall before the main act, calming, pervasive. Technically, she's on watch in case Barry's condition takes a sudden turn for the worse, but the reality is different: she's just keeping an eye on a sleeping Barry while Cisco, arms folded and head on his chest, snores quietly in a corner.

There's a headache behind her eyes and she wants to sleep, but she's restless, needing confirmation that Zoom isn't back to finish the job.

Somewhere between getting up and yawning through another perfunctory check of Barry's vitals around four in the afternoon, Caitlin sits in the chair beside his bed to read, falling asleep to the sound of his soft breathing.

She knows that as long as it's _there_ , everything else will be okay.


End file.
